Buses

As is commonly known, driving on the wrong left side of the road is one of many things people in England Britain do wrong differently. What I've only just realized, is that English British Scottish buses tend to have the order of the information on them wrong mixed up inverted. So instead of, for example,

22 Emmen

which was the bus I took to high school, they say,

Penicuik 37

which will bring you to IKEA.

It all makes perfect sense if you insist on driving on the wrong left side of the road, of course, seeing as in both cases it's easier to see the bus numbers in a big long line of buses if you're standing on the pavement. But that doesn't make it right.

Diagnosis murder

From the Beeb:

Symptoms develop after three to 10 days, and include flu-like illness, inflammation of the brain, coma and death.

Hmm... if death is a symptom of the disease, then you're pretty much fucked from the start. Quite scary stuff, this.

I was going to comment on the world being a healthier place before mass long-distance travel, when all we had was the occasional outbreak of ergot giving entire villages a nice trippy experience. But even then there was the plague being spread by rats travelling on ships to Norway (Det kom eit skip til Bjørgvin and all that), and I don't suppose the mass long-distance travel that were the crusades were the healthiest pastimes around. And then of course there is the case of mass long-distance travel being caused (well, facilitated, more like) by an unhealthy situation (*).

(*) Exodus 7-12, mainly.(**)
(**) Airport gates, and exits more generally, are called έξοδος in Greek. I wonder whether flights to Tel Aviv depart from Gate 12...

In the past week I have...

• been to Ikea and bought a Billy and a Benno, among other things;


• finished The English by Jeremy Paxman (see below);


• had the Evil Article finally accepted in Transactions of the Philological Society;


• been sore-footed, for which I blame KH's idea that we should set with a 150 degree turnout;


• failed to get internet banking, probably because they only have my mobile and I gave them the landline and so there are ‘discrepancies’ between different sets of information;


• decided to do some NeighborNet stuff for my PhD, as well as do some geostatistics;


• contacted the necessary people to actually do NeighbourNet stuff and geostatistics;


• learned about Romance plurals;


• purchased two Faroese CDs through iTunes – Fram á hermótið by Páll Finnur Páll (*) and Hugafar á ferð by Høgni Reistrup;


• done some other things not worth mentioning.

Book review:

Paxman sets out on a mission to explain why the English are so damn, well, English. This mainly involves an explanation of how the English are so English, of what Englishness actually is. Another recurring argument in the book is that the English actually aren't very English at all; this is reserved for a tiny proportion of the English that Paxman calls ‘the Breed’. The Breed are the ones that live in the countryside, that are all about honour, dignity, patriotism and Etonian nepotism, that think "what-ho" and "jolly" are actual words, that excel at hunting and sports, that would gladly sacrifice a limb if it meant a Frog or a Kraut would lose two – all these quintessentially English things. The rest of them are really poor buggers who don't even have an identity. The Scots, Welsh and Irish are better off than the plebs of England; they may have been kicked off their land and replaced by sheep, or sent to work in the mines, but at least they have an identity.

But although Paxman's book is a very enjoyable read, and quite instructive about the essence of Englishness and its diachronic continuity within the Breed, I haven't been able to figure out the real crux: why are the English, if only a select few of them, so English? Or more importantly, why are most of them not?

(*) In Faroese this gets a dative: við Pálli Finni Pálli. Joyful geekery.

Beastly food

Welcome to Tesco's.

stir fry veggies	1.29
pâté	0.58
butter	1.12
yoghurt	0.58
milk	1.34
bread	0.68
chocolate cookies	1.07
total	6.66

And six points on my clubcard, too.

Birds and stones

Today we got rid of:

• six litres of out-of-date Irn Bru;


• three litres of out-of-date lemonade;


• four litres of out-of-date Coca-Cola (all from Freshers' Weekend 2006);


• the clog in the bathroom sink.

Accomplishment.

Why I missed my tutorial

Paraphrasing:

Sorry, but I had to do a week's military service in South Korea.

The disturbing thing is that it's true.

More bookblog

This one I forgot last time, mainly because I'd lend it to JF, so it wasn't on my bookshelf to remind me of its brilliant randomness:

• The Book of Dave by Will Self. I really only knew Self from his appearances on Shooting Stars (uvavu, uranu, ulrikakakakakakakaka!). His persona there was someone utterly devoid of human emotion, with a heavily sarcastic view of the world and an ego that would fill several continents. I think I was right; or at least, this book shows that Will Self is positively certifiable. The plot: London taxi driver Dave is going through a bit of a rough patch. His loveless marriage broken up, he doesn't get to see his son, and everyone seems to want something from him. Dave then goes completely insane and writes a massive misogynistic rant addressed to his son. This involves a complete separation of the sexes after puberty. Also, his arrogance as keeper of The Knowledge (e.g., where Woodburn Place is) shines through as well. In a fit of rage he buries the book, printed on metal for some odd reason, in his ex-wife's backyard. Centuries later, people find it and base a new religion on it. Suppressive new world order, that sort of thing. At times the book is a bit difficult to plough through, but it is a very challenging and mind-engaging read. (I still think Will Self should be locked up, for his own safety if not for ours. He can still appear on t'telly though.)

Then two of the recently-bought ones:

• Adrian Mole and the weapons of mass destruction by Sue Townsend. This reads as a diary, a year in the life of Adrian Mole. It is not a very interesting life as such, but it's woven together by a whole string of randomness. An insane relationship that is doomed to fail, a lifestyle that he can't afford, and his struggle to get a refund for a £57 deposit for a holiday in Cyprus (which he cancelled because Tony Blair had said that Iraq could develop weapons of mass destructions that could easily reach Cyprus in 45 minutes, which obviously makes it a Dangerous Place to Be).


• A spot of bother by Mark Haddon. Wow. Nothing at all like The curious incident with the dog in the night time, but possibly even better. For one, it's not written from the perspective of an autistic kid, so it's slightly easier to relate to. There are 144 chapters, divided between four perspectives. Plot summary from the back of the book (paraphrased as I've lent the book to EM now): daughter Katie is marrying Ray, whom the family don't like. Son Jamie is not willing to bring his boyfriend to the wedding, afraid that his parents will make a scene about it. Mother Jean is cheating on her husband with one of his former work colleagues. And father George gets squished in the middle of all this, while he also finds a rather bothersome spot on his skin and decides he has skin cancer. This is only the beginning, watch it evolve. Because the 144 chapters are so short, it's very easy to think, ‘oh, just one more chapter’, so it didn't take too long to finish.

The irony

A small avalanche-slash-episode of falling rocks in Tórshavn today, at undir Bryggjubakka in the harbour. A rather unfortunate event, especially for the two cars that got slightly damaged.


Photo credit: Jens Kr. Vang, www.portal.fo

Note the green sign in the background: this is supposed to be the safe point in case of an emergency.

Oops

I went to Cameron Toll. W H Smith's has 3 for 2 on everything (yes, everything!), and Waterstone's has 3 for 2 on selected items. Today's purchases are...

• A spot of bother by Mark Haddon;


• Love over Scotland by Alexander McCall Smith;


• Salmon fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday;


• The English by Jeremy Paxman;


• Empire by Niall Ferguson; and


• Adrian Mole and the weapons of mass destruction by Sue Townsend.
  

Reviews in due course.

I also bought a DVD: Delicatessen, which is a French movie about a butcher in France just after the war, who is keeping up with demand by killing people. Could be interesting...

Meanwhile, I finished another book – Ik mis alleen de Hema by Manon Sikkel and Marion Witter. Stories about people who emigrated from the Netherlands. Some stayed abroad, some returned. For some of them it was exactly like they expected, other people's lives took a very unexpected turn. All in all rather quite enjoyable reading, but nothing world-shocking. Also, only two of the people actually said they missed the Hema. I don't, because we've got good shops here too and I was never addicted to Hema-rookworsten anyway.

New favourite word

From yesterday's Sosialurin...

Avdottin fólk og rúsdrekkakoyring

Hóast vikuskiftið hevur verið friðaligt, hava fleiri fólk verið og sovið rúsin av sær. Eisini eru 4 fólk tikin fyri rúsdrekkakoyring.

Bæði fríggja- og leygarkvøldið var mestsum fult á støðini í Jónas Broncksgøtu. Vakthavandi greiðir frá, at tey fáa nógvar áheitanir frá fólki, sum tíðliga um morgunin finna avdottin fólk í garðinum ella í túninum hjá sær. Eisini fólk, sum eru á veg heim úr býnum og síggja fólk liggja avdottin, ringja til løgregluna at boða frá.
Umframt avdottin fólk, vóru eisini fýra dømi um rúsdrekkakoyring um vikuskiftið. Tveir førarar vórðu tiknir í Suðuroynni, ein varð tikin í miðstaðarøkinum og ein varð tikin í Eysturoynni.
Vakthavandi sigur, at allir førarar høvdu eina promillu, ið var yvir tað loyvda, og onkur kann vænta at missa koyrikortið. Blóðroyndir vórðu tiknar, og einki er tó vist fyrr enn blóðroyndirnar eru afturkomnar.

It literally means ‘fallen off’, but it is used for people who are so drunk they just fall asleep. In this case, in other people's gardens – and not just the one person either. These Scandinavians and their alcohol...

Incidentally, the police station is in Jónas Bronck Street. According to the Faroese, Bronck was a famous Faroese sailor that the Bronx in New York City is named after. This is almost certainly untrue; a Swedish sailor of the same name is more likely to have given his name to the area. But hey, if you can't have an area of New York, I suppose a street in downtown Tórshavn is a decent alternative...

Culture

It's been a while since I updated with a list of books recently read. In no particular order...

Harry Potter and the deathly hallows (J K Rowling) – There's no need to say very much about this. The end was a bit anti-climactic and dragged on for a bit longer than it really should. Things were repeated again and again, which was a little bit annoying. Yes I know this by now, you've only explained it three times before! Then again, as I was later reminded of, it is a children's book.

De brug (Geert Mak) – This was this year's free book gift in the Dutch book promotion week. Mak takes us to İstanbul, to the bridge that links the European and the Asian bits of the city. The story is about the people living and working on the bridge: coffee sellers, shoeshiners, people that sell random bits of junk, and people that steal it away from you just as quickly. People that have come from the countryside to get a better life in the city, and failed. But really it's the story of the bridge itself, of İstanbul, and of Turkey.

De magie van de eilanden (Ben Hoekendijk) – A non-live travel journal of a man doing a solo crossing of the North Sea, from the Netherlands to Fair Isle, Shetland, the Faroes, Orkney, the Farne Islands, and back. Nice because I recognize a fair bit from my own travels to Shetland and the Faroes, but at times rather annoying for technical speak (slightly too detailed on how an automatic steering installation works) or his emphasis on 'spiritual' (read: quite seriously Christian) things.

Zoektocht in Katoren (Jan Terlouw) – The sequel to that great classic, Koning van Katoren. Again we see a cumbersome adventure through the country, visiting all sorts of cities, each with their own problem which is an exaggerated version of something from Real Society (people suing each other over nothing, Health and Safety rules gone berserk, animal rights in the meat industry, etc.). I always found Koning van Katoren really clever, but the issues in this book were so obvious! Or would it have been the fact that I've grown older since reading Koning van Katoren (about 20 years, in fact), and that great classic, too, is in fact political commentary very thinly disguised?

Rottumerplaat (Jan Wolkers) – The €1 edition (heavily cut) of the 1971 diary of Jan Wolkers' stay on this uninhabited island. Wolkers is basically a bit of dirty old man but at the same time very loving to animals. Oddness. But perfect for a short train ride. Also from the €1 promotional series, Heblust by Ronald Giphart. Which therefore is completely about sex, so slightly ambivalent feelings toward that one.

Think that's probably it for now.

Cleaning Services

At Support Services we are always trying to improve the service we provide to you. To improve communication and make it easier to contact the staff when you have a problem or need assistance we have now trained all our cleaning supervisors on Outlook. If you have any issues that you wish resolved regarding cleaning or suggestings for improvement then please feel free to contact the relevant supervisor.

Trained on Outlook. Suggestions for improvement? Ehm...

I hope you find the above useful.

Yes. My life is complete now. I can e-mail the cleaning guy.

This was distributed to all the desks in all the rooms. What a waste of paper. Of course, we will now all chuck these sheets and then have to deal with angry cleaners who get hernias because the waste paper bags are so heavy.

Discourse analysis

Your discourse analysis homework du jour:

Nous informons notre aimable clientèle que tout linge emporté lui sera facturé.

Nous vous remercions de votre compréhension.

La direction

What is strange about this? And what does it mean?

Marriage

Or, why I was in Duinkerken:



The joy of ancient marriage registers. I am very indebted to Johannes van de Cnocke for at least having a legible handwriting (see above). Most of the other ministers are a lot more difficult to read.

So, when I get back to Edinburgh, I can look forward to browsing through 800+ photographs of microfilm images of the marriage registers of Duinkerken, four to six photographs per spread, of the years ending in 7 between 1647 and 1697. Supposedly, and hopefully, this will give me the same kind of information* as I got from the Shetland marriage registers, and another decent chunk of PhD dissertation. From a very superficial browsing of the data, as I was taking pictures of it, it seems like there are some interesting things going on. Yay, another couple of days well spent.

* Possibly better, as for 1647 and 1657 they also list where the people were born, which gives an excellent picture of spatial mobility and social networks at the time. Unfortunately after the French came to power in 1662, this information was no longer recorded, or alternatively, everyone was just born in Duinkerken...

** iPhoto doesn't have an invert colours option, and Adobe Illustrator doesn't save as .JPG. Does anyone know of any decent picture editing software for the Mac?

Back

We left Armbouts-Kappele this morning at 9, had a short visit to Fort Mardijk (one of the most depressing places I have ever used linguistic data from), and left Duinkerken around 9.30, to arrive in The Hague about 12.45. We then had lunch, left The Hague at 14.45 to arrive at my parents' at 19.00. That last bit usually takes two and a half hours, but it was rather busy on the roads.

Now my back hurts. Stupid uncomfortable drivers' seat...

France

I am in France. This is evident from the font on the roadsigns rather than their content. Otherwise, it could just as well have been Belgium: Zuydcoote, Ghyvelde, Spycker, Armbouts-Cappel, Hondschoote, Pitgam, Teteghem, ...

Of course, it's only historical accident that this is in fact France, and not Belgium. (And another historical accident, quite related to the previous one, that it's not the Netherlands.) And that's why I'm here. Looking at population registers in the municipal archives of Duinkerken.* The marriage registers are quite interesting, and show some nice links to Flanders, at least before 1662 when Duinkerken became French. Afterwards, not very many Flemish origins are mentioned. If this means that there weren't any, that would be very interesting...

Very bored writing everything down by hand. It takes ages, because the documents (on microfilm) are handwritten in some 17th-century secretary hand. Time to bring in the camera, whoosh through decades of marriage registers and do the painstakingly boring work once I get back to Edinburgh.**

* The French sillily write Dunkerque on the road signs.
** They also insist that this should be Édimbourg.

Signage

Possibly the most opaque Canadian traffic sign. Not entirely sure what is not allowed here. No castagnettes? (We shuddered to think of the other very obvious option and possible ways to enforce it.)


Also in Montréal. Just so you know you really have to stop.


In Athens Airport. I'm always mildly amused when I drive to a place I've never been before, and they have signs up warning me that the traffic situation has changed. So what? But this is rather quite useless too: everything's the same! Honest!


Somewhere in Mitilini. Twenty years ago, this would have landed Greece on the Axis of Evil. Now it's just quaint. Bless 'em.


In the Olympic Airways plane with the deceptive registration SX-BIG. Note that this sign was stuck on the inside of the luggage bin, and that it therefore could only be read if the information it conveyed was false.


At Heathrow. "Data or files may be lost" is not something you want to hear when you're waiting for your luggage...

Some photos from Montréal and Μιτιλήνη

The flags


The flags in Montréal tended to come in fours, with the Québec flag flanked by those of Montréal, Canada, and the United States. Why the United States? I have no idea. Greece has a lot fewer flags than Canada, in my experience at least.

The skylines


Okay, so Mitilini doesn't really have a sky-line. But I didn't have a photo of the Montréal waterfront.

The local heroes


Bonus points for those who know why these people are famous. The one on the left is one Jean Drapeau, the one on the right is Vladimir Iljitsj Lenin Ελευθέριος Βενιζέλος (Elefthérios Venizélos), whom the airport in Athens is named after. (And whose statue looks in nothing like the guy on the photo on the information board next to it.)

It's all Greek to them

As everyone knows, Greek is written with the Greek alphabet. For the historical linguist geeks among you, since the time of Ancient Greek, the voiced stops β [b], γ [g] and δ [d] have become fricatives (so [v], [γ] and [ð] respectively). But sometimes they need to write the sounds [b], [d] and [g] still. Fortunately [p], [t] and [k] have voiced allophones in certain positions, so they just pretend that these phonological contexts are there in spelling.



My first encounter with this insane system was at 4am in a bookshop at Athens Airport, where we saw a book by one Γκρέγκορι Ντέιβιντ Ρόμπερτς (Gregory David Roberts). But you get used to it, and after a while it gets less of a challenge, but still quite good fun, to decipher what the bar price lists mean by Ρεντ Μπουλ, Γλενφίντιχ or Τζόνι Γουόκερ (interestingly, with l-vocalization, but incorrectly with [ʍ]).

Ils sont fous, ces Grecs.

Lesbos (Μιτιληνη)

Melt. Sigh.

Yet the semantics of that phrase are completely different to the description of Montréal.

More later.

Montréal

Melt.
Sigh.

At the zoo

Someone told me it's all happening at the zoo. I do believe it, I do believe it's true...

I joined the small expotition to Edinburgh Zoo last Sunday. We had LG, JW, JW's sister whose name I do not know, and their friend Gordon who also goes by Percy. As one does. JW is an important person who is in possession of The Membership, which gave me an additional discount on top of the student discount. I could theoretically have saved another 50p on the entrance fee by opting out of the voluntary donation that they don't really tell you is voluntary. But I was feeling charitable. Chimpanzees need a place to live as well.

There were many animals at the zoo, although there were at least equally many that should have been there according to the signs, but empirical evidence of their existence is lacking and the only possible scientific conclusions are that they are either imaginary or abducted by aliens and sold into slavery in the Andromeda nebula. (Poor sod who bought the sloth.)

The penguins went for a walk, but they did not do tap-dance nor did they burst out into polytonic renditions of classic Motown hits. Very disappointing. They must have been the wrong species.

The Avian antics were nice but also very scary. I wouldn't want to run into a turkey vulture in a dark alley on a cold November evening. (Or anywhere/anytime else.) We saw an otter having caught a little white mouse try to eat it but when he dove under for a second an evil seagull stole it. And the second one as well. I think some form of seagull deterrent near the otter enclosure is in order. Personally I was thinking about laser-guided nuclear missiles, but LG thought that was a bit harsh.

It was nice and sunny and I had a nice time and a hotdog (although not 'the greatest hotdog in the world' as they advertised on the carton).

Homer and the hippies

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/6901543.stm

The Simpsons movie comes out next month, and to get some extra publicity, a giant outline of Homer Simpson holding a doughnut has been painted next to the Cerne Abbas giant, an age-old chalk carving of a guy with certain attributes that make it quite clear why people nowadays think it was a fertility symbol.


(image stolen from the BBC website)

But the Wessex district manager of The Pagan Federation (there is such a person) isn't at all happy with this.

"I'm amazed they got permission to do something so ridiculous. It's an area of scientific interest."

Which is why Homer was painted in the field next to the giant. No longer an area of scientific interest.

"We were hoping for some dry weather but I think I have changed my mind. We'll be doing some rain magic to bring the rain and wash it away."

As we all know, the weather is made possible in cooperation with differences in athmospheric pressure, among other things. I doubt rain magic comes into the picture. I can see how a massive Homer could be offensive to people who regard the Cerne Abbas giant as a holy site, but threatening with rain magic just draws it right back into the realm of the ridiculous. Another point not scored by the neo-pagans.

Which doesn't mean I think it's an excellent idea to paint Homer on a hill, but that's beside the point.

Gezellig naar de Krim

I just saw the most horrendous television programme ever. Take a dozen couples of old age pensioners with caravans going on a mass holiday in the Crimea, and broadcast their adventures on national television. Why, pray tell, would this ever be a good idea? I only saw about ten minutes of the programme, but they were ten minutes of constant cringing.

At the fact they bought and pre-cooked-and-then-froze all their food in the Netherlands, so that they won't have to eat any of the Ukranian food. At the fact that they complain they can't get recent Dutch newspapers in the middle of nowhere in the Ukraine. At the fact they ridicule Ukranians for not speaking English. At the sorry state of their own English which makes me want to jump off the top floor of David Hume Tower in replacive shame. At the way they made custard by shaking the ingredients in a thermos - "because we don't have a mixer" - which of course wasn't closed properly so that the Ukranian campsite was covered in yellow mush.

At the fact that these are horrible examples of proletarians who should just have taken their sorry old excuses for a caravan to the fokking Veluwe - or the Sauerland or the Belgian Ardennes, if they were feeling adventurous. But most of all at the fact that all of this is on television and there are people who actually like to watch this.

Meanwhile... we had a couple of days of good weather. I did some cycling; I'm terribly out of shape (not as bad as some of the roads though) and now have severely sunburnt legs despite the suncream. I also bought two new CDs (Crowded House and Tori Amos) and two new DVDs (Flushed away and Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Wererabbit), some new clothes and a new book.

Bigotry

Danny Kennedy, deputy leader of the Ulster Unionist Party on the news that the British National Party may be recruiting in Northern Ireland:

"This isn't the kind of imported hate-mongering that we want or need in Northern Ireland."
(BBC News website, 3 July 2004)

Interpretation 1: We are perfectly capable of doing our own hate-mongering, and we have enough of it already, that we don't need extra hate-mongering brought in from England. (That last bit is a bit odd for the UUP, maybe?)

Interpretation 2: They're even bigoted when it comes to the origins of their bigotry.

Backblog (2): Norway

Skipping over a boring half-week with work and unsuccessfully trying to reschedule the generic Language in Context slot to Mondays, or Tuesdays, or anything but Wednesday afternoon... and we arrive at the 2nd PhD Conference in Linguistics and Philology, which was held in Bergen (Norway -- hence the post title) on June 4-6.

Flying out on the Sunday morning, a direct Widerøe flight from Edinburgh to Bergen in a relatively small propellor plane, although it was probably slightly bigger than the one I went to Shetland on last year. I had some difficulties tuning in to the flight attendant's strong Bergen accent, especially with the noise of the motors, but after five years of not actually speaking Norwegian I turned out to still be able to do so anyway. In Bergen I managed to get Norwegian money and find the airport bus to the center of town, and then quickly the hotel.

Hotel. This may be a bit of an overstatement. For £35 a night you would expect more than just a bed and a sink that doesn't actually drain, even in Norway. The light wasn't brilliant either (definitely not more than 30 W) but as it was summer and far North that didn't really matter as it didn't really get dark anyway. I quickly redefined 'hotel' as 'place to kip and nothing else' and stuck to it.

Went out wandering for the rest of the afternoon and evening, mostly oscillating between Bergenhus fort, the park at Lille Lungegårdsvann and Vågen/Bryggen. Found out where I could buy food (the Narvesen kiosk near Galleriet, or the one at Bryggen, or the Baker Brun at Zakariasbryggen) and did so. Danishes, which they call wienerbrød, are great. We have the skillingbolle, which is the local specialty: a cinnamonny Danish with a spiral of white icing. The prinsessebolle, which I can't really remember what it was but I think it's a skillingbolle without the icing. And the skolebolle, which is the skillingbolle with a big blob of set custard in the middle. Behold my breakfast for the next three days. I also need to mention the Imsdal bottled water with lime and fiber taste. Fiber, yes. Oddness.

It was fantastic weather both at Bergenhus fort...



... and at Lille Lungegårdsvann. (And also at Bryggen but I don't want to overdo it on the photo front.)



Then on Monday started the conference, which was the 'real' (right...) reason for going to Bergen. My talk was the first one up after the plenary, and it went alright. This meant that I had the rest of the conference to relax. As usual, you meet people on the first day of the conference that you hang out with for the rest of it. These were JT, a Serbian girl who grew up in Britain and is doing her PhD in Brighton on the syntax/semantics of modals; MF, a Spanish woman who is working on translation in Swansea and speaks with a Welsh lilt; and BUJ, who is from Hedmark but spent five years in Glasgow and sounds like it!

Best talk at the conference was probably the Polish girl who was talking about weak and strong adjective declensions in Old English. Interesting topic, well-presented and a convincing case. The worst talk... well, in reality this was probably the guy from Israel who rush-read through his paper with many an example in Hebrew and didn't quite succeed in telling us what he was actually talking about. But the cash prize goes to... RM from Zaporižža National University in the Ukraine. "Linguophilosophic parameters of English innovations in the sphere of new technologies." God knows what that was about; or probably he doesn't because it was completely incomprehensible and drowned in sixteen-line sentences with five-syllable words. It wouldn't have been so bad if she didn't always ask smart-arsy questions at all (!) the talks.

Also met the Icelandic incarnation of Miss Piggy. JB was chief organizer of the conference, and appears to suffer from a complexity of complexes. She really, really likes herself, is very proud of her achievements, and blames not getting all sorts of important jobs on old boys' networks. We call this a 'victim complex'. Of course these people, even though they haven't published as much as you, may well be as qualified, and just by 'being a single mother and working like a slave for eighteen hours a day' you don't always get what you want. Tough. She did get massive funding (£1m) for a project on case in Indo-European. Which, according to JB, shows that if you think big enough, it's possible to get funding, even for a woman, and even in the humanities. Think big enough. Would that be the reason for grabbing a bowl of peanuts ten minutes after the conference dinner while exclaiming, 'Gee, I'm hungry again already!'...

The flights back were okay. The plane from Bergen to Copenhagen was slightly delayed, which meant that I had to spend an extra half hour in an airport without decent shopping facilities whatsoever (yes, fags and booze, but who cares about that). The plane was a gigantic jumbo and I was sat right at the back next to a woman from Turku who had to run in Copenhagen to get her connecting flight to Stockholm. (Zigzagging your way through Scandinavia, nice...) Then had to spend some time in Copenhagen Airport until the flight to Edinburgh. Had a look at the gate where the Atlantic Airways plane to the Faroes was parked, but didn't recognize anyone. (Hey, I would easily recognize 45 Faroese people, which is 1/1000 of their population. This is a much larger proportion than what I know of the Dutch or Scottish population, and the chances of Faroese people flying to the Faroes from Denmark are also quite substantial, so it was worth a try, especially when bored.)

Danes have a strange music taste, as a quick browse through the music store showed. The new Runrig album was at number 7 in their charts. Now I like Runrig, but even in Scotland it doesn't get to that high a chart position. The Danes also like Michael Learns to Rock, which I thought stopped making music aeons ago. Apparently not.

Oh well, I bought Danish water (Egekilde) and Swedish chocolate, and then a typically Danish hotdog which was very mustardy and little meaty. (Good thing I had the Danish water...) The girl who sold me the hotdog was obviously Danish but when I asked for a hotdog in Norwegian she answered in Swedish. I would probably have understood the Danish, at least I managed to understand the Danish the rest of the airport people spoke. (Mainly the three people I had to ask for directions to the nearest cash machine which was in a very odd location.)

The plane to Edinburgh was way too small for its own good. It was a jet plane, but it was the size of the thing I went to Shetland on. That didn't really add up, and I wasn't really happy during take off, which otherwise was very pretty as you could see the bridge over the Øresund, which starts right next to the airport. (Well I think it comes out of a tunnel underneath the airport there.) Must say I didn't really like the weather report for Edinburgh: overcast and 12 degrees, after having had bright sunshine and 25 degrees in Norway (!). But I survived, and the whole experience was a Good Thing.

Now it's time to go to a dinner party at EM's.

Backblog

And then suddenly three months went by without any updates. Oops. Which means that I now have an enormous backlog of adventures to relate. I don't think I'm going to manage to remember all the way back to March, but the recent past should be alright. So here we go, going in approximate reverse chronological disorder...

Last Saturday, JH and I went to see AF's choir in concert. It was nicely done, although we both had our thoughts about the singing skills of the girl with ringlets. AF also introduced us to his new boy. I say introduced; really AF just vaguely waved in the general direction and we had to wait until the boy introduced himself. He seems nice enough, but because the choir insisted on going to some odd pub miles away, we ended the night with a cup of tea at home and didn't get to meet him properly. As an aside, I was mildly annoyed by the gay militantism in the choir. Is there really a need to re-write all the lyrics? Especially those of negro spirituals from the abolition struggle? Oh, and claiming HIV as a gay disease, I thought the whole idea was to try to convince Bush that it isn't?

Moving on... On Friday I was extremely unmotivated, so I ended up going into town. I didn't buy any clothes because H&M decided not to have a sale on, but I did buy a 10-DVD set of Tintin cartoons for £20. Childhood memories. Although of course in my childhood Tintin didn't speak with an American accent. Still, have been enjoying some of the movies (there's 21 in all) already, but am trying not to watch too many of them too soon.

Friday's non-motivationality was directly related to Thursday, when I decided to try to work on the Evil Reviewer's comments on my taboo-language article. I need to relate it more to recent literature on language death. Great. I did a nice search, found nothing in the past ten years on language death apart from some monographs along the lines of 'Look at all the different ways language behaves. If we let languages die, we'll lose all of it which will greatly hamper the study of linguistics'. Agreed and all, but incredibly irrelevant to my article. As a result, within ten minutes of starting the editing I had crumpled up the piece of paper and physically chucked it against the wall, and sent AM an e-mail saying I was thinking of telling the editor to sod off with his effing journal. Still waiting for the masterplan to bypass the Evil Reviewer and get my article published...

All of last week was celebration week, really. On Monday, CH passed her viva and we had drinks in the Pear Tree. On Wednesday, RRV passed her viva, which was celebrated in style on Thursday with a mini-banquet and a concert by RRV's trio -- two flutes and piano, well impressed as well by TK's piano skills! -- in St Cecilia's Hall. And on Friday we celebrated AR's distinction in her MSc by drinks in the Pear Tree followed by Chinese buffet at Waverley.

The Saturday before that AF asked whether I wanted to go to Treefest with him. We ran into TB at the bus stop, and later also found some Shambles walking about. And later WB said he was coming too, so it was a big group. Treefest is a nice idea: see what things you can do with wood (especially the handicraftsmen were nice, although whether making wooden cubes from a tree with a chainsaw is a craft is another question) and make sure we treat our forests and our environment nicely. Too bad it was infested with tree-hugging hippies. Yuck! I wash my hands off them!

Walked home with WB and decided to try out the wooden spatula he bought at Treefest (for £3, but then again, it did come with the guarantee that this was the most fantastic spatula ever, and once you use it, you will never use another spatula again). So we had a stirfry, the spatula worked okay, and spent the rest of the evening pottering about in WB's room which turns out to double as a music studio. Some nepotist promotion: see some of the tracks at www.barras.ws (esp. 'Jane' and the Buddy Holly cover are nice), which incidentally weren't recorded in his room but in our office!

Devolution

Yay, mail! From some bloke in Cheshire who's trying to sell New Scotland the books of dances that he wrote. Will pass on to new committee. Then my eye caught the envelope:

EDINBURGH EH_ ___
Scotland

Has devolution reached the Royal Mail?

Traffic

This morning when I put the kettle on, I saw a car drive off from our little square, with what looked like a mother bringing her daughter to school. By the time I was pouring the milk into the tea, the car had returned, with mother but without daughter. Surely if you can drive to school and back in the time it takes for a kettle to boil, you may as well walk!

Discussion skills

Why we like e-mail lists:

> Do you see this, or not?

Hmmm... No, not really. Perhaps if you try
capitalised letters or a bigger font, when
you repeat your arguments?

The author of that comment is actually a distinguished professor of mathematics at a Northern European university. Academics can have a sense of humour...

They don't actually listen, do they?

— So do you get paid to mark our essays?
— Yes, I get paid for 15 hours of marking.
— £15 per essay? That's way better than Scotmid!

Lecturers

xx mm

Surely it's not appropriate for a lecturer to end an e-mail with that?!

Philological Society

I regret to inform you that your submission has not won the Prize on this occasion, but the reviewer(s) have recommended publication in Transactions of the Philological Society, but also suggest some revisions to your manuscript. Therefore, I invite you to respond to the reviewer(s)' comments and revise your manuscript.

Some of the reviewers' comments were actually quite reasonable, even. So I'm going to have to revise the taboo language paper, as well as transform the Shetland marriages paper into the style of the journal Local Population Studies (endnotes! grr!) within a reasonable amount of time. I think they mean two to three weeks. In addition, I will shortly receive 25 first-year essays about social and geographic variation in English, ready to mark.

Philosophical musing

Is it possible to think you’re a hypochondriac without being one?

University e-mail

In recent days the performance problems described below (please read that too), have got worse and this sometimes results in login failures and people being logged off. We know this is happening but we are not able to do much about it. The problem relates to the sheer number of students trying to access mail during busy periods and it is overloading the server infrastructure. The only way to solve this will be to upgrade the server and that is already planned but unlikely to take place before the end of the semester (the details are outlined below in the linked document).

The performance problems really only affect the system between 11am and 6pm on weekdays. At other times the server doesn't suffer from load issues. If you can avoid these peak times then you will get better access. You may also get better response by using a different method of accessing your mail e.g. using Thunderbird or pine rather than webmail.

Read this again.

Please do work at this university. We realise you need to use e-mail to actually do some of this work, but please do not check your e-mail during working hours.

Why don't they just fix the system?

Küpsise- ja ploomitükkidega piimašokolaad

Koostis: suhkur, täispiimapulber, kakaovõi, kakaomass, küpsisetükid 10% (nisujahu, suhkur, margariin (taimne rasv, taimne õli, emulgaator E471, happesuse regulaator (sidrunhape), lõhna- ja maitseaine, toiduvärv E160a), invertsiirup, koorevõi, kanamunad, kondenspiim, sool, lõhna- ja maitseaine, kergitusaine (E500, E503), ploomitükid 8% (ploomimahl, ploom, õun, õunapüree, sahharoos, fruktoosisiirup, laktoos, taimne rasv, happesuse regulaator (E330, E331), želeeriv aine (E401, E440), lõhna- ja maitseaine), emulgaator (sojaletsitiin), lõhna- ja maitseaine, sool. Kakaokuivainet min 27%. Piimakuivainet min 21%. Säilitusaineteta. Hoida kuivas ja jahedas (18±3°C). Võib sisaldada vähesal määral pähkliosakesi.

That’s a lot of lõhna- ja maitseaine in the chocolate New Scotland got given last Thursday. From all the other languages on the wrapper it appears to be aroma, but in Estonian it must be two different things.

More points

4. One of my tutees was (supposedly) ill for two tutorials in November. All the more surprising when I picked up the waste of paper that is Student Newspaper, that he should have written two concert reviews. The concerts were both in Glasgow on the Tuesday nights before the Thursday he was supposed to be at the tutorial. He said he does take the tutorials serious... but maybe the illness was partly self-inflicted? (In other words, you are so busted!)

5. My computers need to behave. My desktop needs to stop stopping. It sometimes randomly gives a black screen, sometimes also stopping the music, but sometimes continuing the music. It's very strange and annoying. The only way to get out of it, is by pushing the power button and restarting. It doesn't complain when you do that, but it might go black soon afterwards anyway.

My laptop is also annoying. I've stopped listening to music on it now, as it continues to stutter. I also sometimes get Blue Screens of Death. Error number 77, apparently that has to do with RAM. But when you do disk checks and memory checks and stuff, it says it's all okay. So not only does it refuse service, it's also a pathological liar. It just needs to behave. Please?

Some points

1. Linguistics and English Language need to teach the same subject in the same way. Although it is very amusing, there is no reason why second-years have to learn for their syntax exam that “subjects do not move until Friday”.

2. Work is interesting. Lots of different things going on at the same time, and I enjoy most of them.

3. Just for reference: life happens in the real world, not on the web. Some people need to get a life.

Amusement

I am mildly amused by the music for the SUSCDF dem.

Also a bit amused by the fact I managed to get three links into that sentence.

More plans

There is also a Historical Sociolinguistics conference slash workshop thing in Greece starting on 21 August. Which would make the Faroese teaching completely impossible. Or, alternatively, I could not go to Montreal, do the Faroese course, leave early and move on to Greece.

I have also been sent a job advert about a lecturership in Scandinavian Studies in Aberdeen. Probably a bit early and also not completely tailor-made to what I've done (i.e. it involves literature), but perhaps worth applying for or otherwise making sure that the people in Aberdeen know who I am.

Summer plans

Sigh. Choose.

• 18th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. Montreal (Canada), 6-11 August 2007.
• Faroese Language Summer Course. Torshavn (Faroes), 1-22 August 2007.

Why do they clash with each other, and not conveniently with the Dunedin Festival, which would give me a winning argument in the endless debates with Fiona Gardner about whether or not I should dance in the festival.

More books

It’s been five months since I last posted a list of books that I’d read. I’ve been very bad and haven’t read a massive amount more. I finished the Einstein biography, none of the books that were on the ‘to read’ list, and apart from that:

• Tony Grant (ed.), From our own correspondent: a celebration of fifty years of the BBC radio programme. LINK
  
• Robert Druce (ed.), An Irishman abroad: Cuey-na-Gael’s An Irishman’s difficulties with the Dutch language and Jack O’Neill’s further adventures in Holland. LINK
  
• Alexander McCall Smith, The right attitude to rain. LINK
  

A nice range from non-fiction, via unsure, to fiction.

Now reading:

• Vilborg Davíðsdóttir, Galdur. LINK
  

I bought it from the author at the Scottish Society for Northern Studies annual conference yesterday. She talked to me in Icelandic, I told her I had no idea what she was saying, and she wondered that if I didn’t speak Icelandic, why was I wanting to buy a book in Icelandic. Oh, the wonders of inter-Scandinavian intellegibility (at least in writing). It’s quite slow, I managed to read five pages today. But I might go faster if I stop reading everything out loud to myself with a thick Faroese accent (i.e. as if it were Faroese) so that I can get over the strange word image. Vilborg lives in Viewforth by the way.

Bedtime.

Poor computer

I had a blue screen of death today. I didn't think XP did blue screens of death, that is sooo Windows 98.

I have momentarily blamed Windows Live Messenger, which I think is the only programme I installed recently. It lasted a while before the problems began, but it seems a likely candidate to blame. So I've closed that down and prevented it from starting itself up again. Same with Skype.

For the geeks:

KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR
****STOP: 0X0000007A (oXC02016E4, 0XC000000E, 0x805B709C, ...)

I couldn't write down the last one before the computer shut itself down. Oh, it did a disk check thing and froze after giving me the results.

Please... does anyone have any ideas how to cure my computer?

Ceilidh

It was rather dead. I think tigger_boing nearly fell off her chair at the following bit of IM conversation...

her: "Dunedin was very quiet. We only had three sets."
me: "Oh, you beat us then."
her: *blinks*

Instead of the £530 we had budgeted to fundraise in our endless optimism, we ended up fundraising -£150,44. Yes, that is a minus sign right there. Joy. We did give out some flyers at the end to interested parties, so we may see some people again. Or maybe not.

Bold statement

Now here's someone who's confident of his own theories:

"Of course, as Mufwene concedes (2001: 76), the founder principle works unless it doesn't."

In other news, I have finished two of the books I wanted to finish (Schreier 2003 and Trudgill 2004, from which is the above quote), sent off the PhilSoc essay, and e-mailed EUSA about when the Pleasance booking is, but I haven't heard back from them and I guess they don't know themselves either. I have also made flyers for our dance classes and sent them to ylla to print.

Lists

More or less inspired by ylla.

Recent accomplishments
(not in chronological order)

• Sorted out the New Scotland money box. We have very many banknotes and coins of higher denominations and therefore are rich!
• Sent a New Scotland cheque to Stanley Mackay. We are now slightly less rich.
• Typed up the minutes from the New Scotland GM. Found out that TeX’ing tables goes easiest by making the table in Excel, copying to Word, then doing Convert table to text with “&” as column separator and then replace line breaks with “\\” plus line break; then copy result into .tex file.
• Formatted the crib sheet for the New Scotland Beginner’s Dance and sent it back to ylla for printing. It looks reasonably okay, but for some reason it didn’t seem possible to make it look as good as last year’s crib sheet.
• Updated the New Scotland constitution with changes from the GM. Yawn.
• Went to Teviot to book rooms for Inters Highland (in vain). They’re redeveloping the entire thing and sending all the dance societies to the Pleasance because they have more space there. No, the Pleasance only has two rooms that are suitable for dancing. That’s why all the dance societies are begging to please be allowed to use the concrete floors in Teviot.
• Read chapters in Schreier (2003) and Trudgill (2004). Their books are better than their article on Tristan da Cunha English phonology, which makes the article even worse. If you know what you’re doing (sort of), why don’t you make an effort in that article? Plus they still need to look at their data a bit better.
• Formatted my entry for the Philological Society’s essay contest according to PhilSoc rules. That would have been so much easier if PhilSoc just make a LaTeX style sheet.
• Became a member of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain. Or at least, filled in the form, copied my matric card as proof of my unwaged status, and included a cheque for £16.50 for membership including the Journal of Linguistics. The envelope is in the mail and I should be hearing from them at some point soon. (They give LAGB members a discount at Oxford University Press!)
• Wrote all the details from my cheque book on my bank statements. New Scotland and Dunedin are both excruciatingly slow in cashing cheques.
• Brought the Palaeography folder to the office. So that Oksana can pick it up at some point and learn all about Old and Middle English handwriting.
• Laundry. But not ironing.
• Chinese Food dem. Which had a very high number of Chinese people, many of the girls in high heels, but contrary to last year, was very low on actual Chinese food. We had to make GH lobby for us being fed. (Yay for a Mandarin speaker in New Scotland!) In the end we all got a pot of noodles. I hope they send James a big fat cheque.
• Marked EL1 assignments. Some know what they’re doing. Most have a reasonable idea, which is definitely enough to pass the exam. There’s a couple who are in real trouble. Actually going to lectures and tutorials may help there.

Still to accomplish

• Send off the PhilSoc essay. Which includes getting a letter from April saying that I am indeed doing a Ph.D., printing the thing off umpteen times and sending it to London somewhere.
• Read the rest of Schreier (2003) and Trudgill (2004). And come up with a reasonably flowing train of thoughts about what could be improved in the books and what they need to look at more. Or less.
• Read Guignet & Lottin (2006) in the NLS. Which probably involves re-applying for the book as it has been more than 6 days since I was there last. It is also a very boring book which doesn’t help.
• Remember what the other thing was I wanted to become a member of. I’m sure it was something languagey but can’t quite remember what. It may also have been Time which I thought about subscribing to a while back but have now decided it would be a waste of money.
• More dancing. Greek dancing, dem class, Halloween ceilidh, Thursday classes, possibly including inters country if it doesn’t rain.
• Sort out committee meeting. Involves pestering more committee members for when they can make the meeting and then try and figure out if there’s a date before the Beginners’ Dance that everyone can make. (That looks particularly unlikely at this point.)
• Call Mrs Wilson. Must try to book Kirk O’ Field for Inters Highland.
• E-mail EUSA. When are we supposed to freeze to death in early morning hours so that we can have rooms at the Pleasance to dance in?
• Pack. To go home on Saturday morning for all of four days.
• Claim. I spent £38.40 on train tickets to and from Aberdeen last week. It appears I can claim this back from Aberdeen University. All I need is for them to send me some forms. Which they’ve said they’ll do.
• The umpteen other things that I can’t remember right now.

Train journey up North

Is incidentally a very nice and easy (yet seemingly complicated and liable to mess up) dance that has been done at Dunedin for the past umpteen weeks, until everyone gets it right. Apart from that, it’s also what a large part of my Wednesday this week consisted of.

I went up North to Aberdeen to give a talk at their Linguistic Circle-type seminar thing. Quite nervous about the whole train journey – well, not so much the train journey as the buying a ticket for it. There was quite a long queue so I decided to try the machines. Seemed easy enough, Aberdeen was a popular destination so it had its own button. But then something happened that my simple brain was not prepared for: I had to choose between ten different ticket types (all with different prices). So how am I supposed to know what is what? So I joined the queue after all.

The journey was quite nice and uneventful. Hid from Creepy Graeme upon arrival in Aberdeen. It appears that he works for First Scotrail or whatever the company is called this week. Got picked up from the station, was given tea, did the talk, answered questions (none too difficult), was fed dinner and transported back to the station for the train back South. I was home at 11.30pm.

Then back to the normal rhythm of teaching tutorials on a Thursday and Friday. The guy on (e) continues to amaze me with his ceaseless attempt to impress er... don’t know who he wants to impress but he’s clearly doing his best. His homework contained a selection of slightly garbled transcriptions of English words, and the phrase

honeyboner = English language erection

which is a word play on the name of the phonetics lecturer. Hilariously funny, of course. But why exactly he thought it was a good idea to put this on his homework I have no idea. I shall have to ask him.

New Scotland GM went by rather painlessly, although I think JF’s mumbled suggestion to lock JB up in a cage somewhere before the next GM should perhaps be seriously considered.

Friday tutorial as usual completely different from the Thursday one. It’s not a question of the amount of linguistics vs. lit students like it was last year, I think it’s more personalities this time. No one feels the urge to be on (e) on Friday, I guess. The Friday group is collectively cold, but there is a kettle next door. Not sure if I should bring cups and tea/coffee next week or whether it’s their own responsibility.

I like the tunes Calgary Fiddlers’ Welcome to Shetland and Tam Lin. In general, tunes that are in some way or another related to Shetland are generally very stomachable.

Must. Stop. Rambling.

Things not to say in tutorials

One of the guys in my tutorial was asking questions about a question that we hadn’t discussed yet. We were still debating all the possible answers to question (d), but he had moved on. So the other students were confused and didn’t know what he was talking about. I clarified:

He’s on (e).

Everyone started laughing, I realised what I’d said... and the only person looking completely clueless was the guy who was on (e).

It’s not as bad as Amanda last year, when dividing her group into smaller groups that had to work together to write down all the characteristics of the consonants in the word smoothing:

So if you guys do s and m, ...

Hmm... it seemed funnier at the time.

Accomplishments

Okay, I can’t remember everything that happened since the last post. A more detailed overview of part of last week follows below. Things that also happened: tutorial groups, meeting Zakaris, dancing, AF’s birthday party, generaly work-type things.

On Tuesday I...

• ... went to Dem Class where we learned a completely new step that goes with a menuet. Step right, step left, close right behind. Step left, step right, close left behind. It caused a lot of confusion but we’d better learn it as it will be part of the SUSCDF dem. I can see the other universities going “What the...?” already.

On Wednesday I...

• ... went to the National Library to read two chapters from a book about the history of the North of France. As it’s mostly not entirely relevant, I can read through it at a reasonably high speed.
• ... had a budget meeting for New Scotland with AL and CI. Being slightly optimistic we managed to get the budgeted expenditure within £250 of the budgeted income. Unfortunately Freshers’ Weekend is hideously undersubscribed so that’s the budget out the window already.
• ... went to the New Scotland cupboard in McEwan Hall with AL to retrieve our kilometer of cling film. It is quite an impressive stack.
• ... learned about norms in Computer Hong Kong English and attitudes about the esthetics of language among speakers of Swiss German. Also known as the Language in Context research group.
• ... went to Dunedin and danced. Train journey up North or whatever the dance is called is a nice dance.

On Thursday I...

• ... went back to the National Library to read two more chapters in the French book, and wondered why people need to sit in the chair directly next to me if there’s plenty of space elsewhere.
• ... went to the first year lecture on morphology and taught a tutorial.
• ... went to the Linguistic Circle which was reasonably interesting, and to the drinks and nibbles afterwards. There were exactly zero other students at the drinks and nibbles, which was slightly annoying. But Miriam did suggest ‘we’ (i.e. ‘I’) do something about the Tristan da Cunha article. (See Friday.)
• ... left the Linguistics building at 5.40, went home via my office, stuffed New Scotland stuff in my bag, left the flat at 5.50, then on to LG’s to deliver the kilometer of cling film, left LG’s at 6.03 (having also gulped down a cup of tea – thanks LG!), and was at Lutton Place at 6.10.

On Friday I...

• ... did assorted bits and bobs on the taboo language, the Shetland marriages, the Aberdeen talk (which is basically an amalgamation of the other two anyway), and some other things.
• ... had a meeting with HG and all the other tutors about the morphology module.
• ... went to the English Language Research Group where we thrashed an article on the origins of Tristan da Cunha English.
  
• ... didn’t go to the first year lecture on morphology (we were late out of the ELRG and decided it wasn’t worth it) and taught a tutorial.
• ... waved goodbye to the bus for Freshers’ Weekend.
• ... read things on the history of Tristan da Cunha.

Today (so far) I...

• ... did laundry.
• ... went on a Big Shop in Cameron Toll and spent £40 on food and other stuff.
• ... read two chapters from the morphology textbook and another article on Tristan da Cunha English. Now I really wonder why, if the authors did have all this historical population data available, they didn’t use it in the article we thrashed on Friday. They could have done a much better job.
• ... spent the afternoon in the kitchen chopping meat and veg and making a big pot of pasta sauce (3 boxes for the freezer, and dinner for myself), and a big pot of goulash which was filled to the edge until it started boiling and little bubbles of goulash exploded out of the pot. Still I expect to have at least 3 boxes, maybe 4. (These are still to be filled out.)
• ... updated my blog!
  

Body

I have a sillily shaped body.

I went to buy a slightly more wind- and waterproof jacket than the ones I have, but all the ones in the outdoor store – at least all the ones in a slightly affordable price range – seemed ridiculously wide. I guess they don’t make these things for people who are skinny. So I didn’t buy anything, because I didn’t feel I should spend £120 or more on something baggy.

Having failed in that mission, I went into H&M and bought a black shirt (yay! designed for skinny people!) and a zipped hoodie. I also tried to buy jeans but even H&M doesn’t do 29/36. They had one 29" waist one that would have been okay but it had loose threads here and there and I didn’t want that.

I also want new shoes. I always want new shoes, but I now want new shoes that fit into a category in which I have no shoes at present: the dressed-casual category. They had a couple of nice ones but they were rather expensive and I wasn’t sure they were the absolute nicest ones that I would find within a reasonable timespan, so I didn’t buy them.

I also went to Coda to buy Marieke’s new cd, but they didn’t have that one (neither did Virgin and HMV). So I bought some odd Norwegian folk instead. The ploinky-ploinky instrument which I don’t know the name of does tend to get annoying after half an hour...

All in all a very cheap day, considering the stuff that I didn’t buy...

Public rant

As I start writing this, it is Thursday morning just before 8am. I am already dreading what’s going to happen ten hours from now. I am looking unforward* to New Scotland tonight. This is not a Good Thing. In fact, it is a Very Bad Thing.

The Curse that is the ghettoblaster has ended up in our flat. It will have to be at the Chaplaincy for 6.30 tonight. Also in our flat are two sets of SCD CD’s, the money box, the membership book, soon a lot of flyers about Freshers’ Week, and the keys to Lutton Place. They will have to be at Lutton Place no later than 6.15. Anyone familiar with the area will know that this is an impossibility.

It appears that no one is available to take the ghettoblaster off my hands (although I still have a slight hope that someone will volunteer), so I am going to have to make myself available, running from my office to the Chaplaincy, and then to Lutton Place. Just hoping there will be someone at the Chaplaincy (New Scotland or friendly servitor) to take the [expletive] thing off me.

I am in lectures/teaching until 5.30. I will have no time for food tonight.

I am also not very happy with the behaviour of some of the more experienced members in the society. I know they’re only trying to help, but still. The society elects a committee to run everything. The point of this, and the point of not standing for committee, is that people don’t have to organise everything themselves. This also means that they should be able to let committee organise things. Friendly advice is always welcome, of course, but certain things don’t need to be said, or can be said at a different time or in a different tone.

I do not appreciate being messengered in the early morning before I can even open Thunderbird to check my work e-mail, to be told that (including the enumeration) [1] we need to announce in notices that there is Country Dance Basics on Tuesdays, and [2] I need to include in next week’s classes e-mail that the new dem class teacher wants us to wear kilts or short skirts.

I have a brain. I can remember something the dem class teacher said less than twelve hours earlier. I can remember it until next Monday. I had even been thinking about the wording. I don’t need to be “reminded” of something so trivial and non-central to the running of the society when there isn’t even the slightest sign that I may have forgotten. (And even if I had forgotten, it wouldn’t have made a difference. People were told individually that they had to wear kilts or short skirts. We are all adults. Surely people can remember for themselves?)

I am also not in charge of notices. I remember very well that I did notices once somewhere in March and got scourged for them being too long and too sarcasting. I have been well and truly impeached from notices and I want nothing to do with them every again.

Also, as far as I understand it, Country Dance Basics is directed not at the people who actually stay at social (who are at least 75% experienced people). It is not really directed at the people who go to cèilidh class and can’t do Beginners’ on Thursday. It is for the people who go on Thursday and want to get better faster. That’s why it’s free: they’ve already paid on Thursday and are making an extra effort, hopefully to the benefit of the society (dem-wise). So anything to do with announcing Country Basics is best done in Beginners’, and the relevant person to ask about putting a notice in that class is the Beginners’ teacher.

Who then sneered at me at Dunedin yesterday, “So I hear I have to be psychic again about what’s happening in my class tomorrow?” Well, it appears that no psychic powers are necessary and he was already told that there was a request for a notice in his class. If he doesn’t want that notice, surely they can sort it out between themselves. Why this warrants a sarcastic comment thrown at me, is still beyond me.

Incidentally this also blurred the sacred distinction between Dunedin (where I can just turn up and enjoy dancing and socializing, no stress) and New Scotland (where I could do that for exactly four weeks before I was drafted onto committee). It did actually take the half-hour walk back home through the wind and drizzle to calm down again.

I hope I can become confident some time during the day that I might actually enjoy New Scotland tonight.


* I need the opposite of ‘looking forward’ but not as strong as ‘dreading’ (yet).

Space

If the people in charge of the space bookings system could allocate me a slightly less confusing one, that would be intensely appreciated.

Thank you.

More conspiracy

More signs that there is a worldwide conspiracy against New Scotland became obvious on Thursday. Not only was it pouring down with rain which may not have done very good things to the cd player (oops), but what exactly do you do when you arrive at McEwan Hall to ‘No you don’t have a ceilidh here tonight!’?

The servitors were great, JB’s skills to navigate the University buildings system came in very handy, Tim and Tom from EUSA were use- and helpful, committee and other NS members excelled, and the numerous freshers who were outside getting drenched until the hall finally opened helped out carrying several hundred chairs off the dance floor.

More NS drama when RW was rushed to hospital earlier that day, but she is fine now. And it turns out I was right all along – a W junior is on his or her way.

In the end we proved the McEwan Hall people wrong, and we did have a ceilidh there tonight. Considering the rain and the late start we actually had a great turnout, Andy was marvellous and his Orcadian probably even better than the one at Rukkus.

Friday morning was spent with JB sorting Thursday’s events out with EUSA, and that too seems to have worked fine. Friday afternoon was the workshop in Teviot with LG, which went really well too and we had five sets at some point. The last hour was a bit slower, we may want to consider that non-dancers (or not-yet-dancers *grin*) will have limited stamina on the last day of Freshers’ Week. Four people joined us in Teviot Middle Bar, which I think is a good score.

The Societies’ Fair will always be one of the middle levels of hell, but we survived. And exactly whose idea was it to put us next to the stuck-up Reelers Club? ‘So do you have free booze at your dances?’ No, we actually like to dance? We made friends with the Flamenco Society and above all with Choc Soc. (‘Join Choc Soc and get free chocolate!’ ‘Come to our ceilidh and dance it all off again!’) At some point AL was handing out Choc Soc flyers while the Choc Soc girl was rallying for our ceilidh.

We also made friends with the Officers Training Corps. They have pipers. AL, LG and me did a fling to the pipes in the Pentland Room. Let’s just say we got an audience...

Worst line of the week, when it was pouring down with rain on the Thursday: ‘You look very wet. We have an indoor event.’

We also seem to have succeeded in attracting Norwegians. There is a Norwegian girl anyway, which is a start.

It’s official!

They are out to get us. There is a world-wide conspiracy against New Scotland, jeopardizing both the running of the society and my personal sanity. It’s been going on for a while, the first signs was the news about when the booking at Pleasance was mysteriously not reaching New Scotland. The Church of Scotland are against us as well, deliberately planning youth Bible groups on Tuesday evenings. Teviot and EUSA aren’t so much against New Scotland in particular, they’re just against societies in general. The Council are being arses, as are the people that run youth hostels. Or those that run marathons.

On a positive note, the workshop that JW ran yesterday went quite well. We even had men. Well, two. But although they may not have been entirely serious about coming to the workshop, they did seem to enjoy it and they did take a flyer with them. Tomorrow and Thursday is the Societies’ Fair.

In other news, I saw a property that was being let by Alba, and on one side it had a sign “Sorry, it’s gone!”. On the other side it had “Przepraszam juz wynajty” (I think it was). So the Polish contingent in Edinburgh is now so significant that lets are being advertised in Polish. Maybe we should advertise our ceilidhs in Polish as well?

(I already discussed with JW the necessity of advertising in Norwegian.)

Late

You know that it’s late when you suggest that doing Brooms of Bon Accord is both funny, a good idea and doable.

And it all started with this photo of a variation on the Broad Swords. New Scotland do broad women, these Californians seem to be doing Broad Farming Equipment.

Hurrah!

They’ve managed to find back the painting Skrik (The scream) by Edvard Munch, which was stolen from a museum in Oslo two years ago. It’s all okay. I came across something Munch-y just the other day, and I remember thinking what a pity it was that the painting was lost forever (as everyone assumed). I feel a weird sense of relief.

In other news, I managed to get through the entire Register of Testaments of Shetland (1611-1650) today. I’m pretty sure they haven’t recorded everything, unless either very few people died or there were very few people to begin with, neither of which I believe is true. I noted down 266 marriages; the next step is to code the names for Norse or Scottish and then I can try and say something sensible about exogamy (inter-ethnic marriage patterns).

Fun fun.

And the purpose is...

Wikipedia (though evil) is very useful. Although sometimes you wonder what the purpose is of the information it gives. For some odd reason that I really can’t remember anymore, I started looking into post codes earlier this evening. Riveting read. It doesn’t seem British post codes are actually used for sorting the mail anymore, because (a) the system isn’t very efficient, and (b) automated handwriting recognition isn’t either.

More to the point: there is an article on the postal areas of Edinburgh, and for some reason for the postal areas of Edinburgh city, it gives the supermarket that serves the area. Whoever wrote this article mustn’t consider Scotmid a supermarket, though. We don’t have a supermarket, says Wikipedia.

Oh well, I guess it’s only a small one. But it sells food and that’ll do.

So

Bleurgh.

Time flies...

(Ah, I’d used that title before.)

I’ve already been back for a week and a half, and I haven’t done a proper blog update for at least a month. In short, I was back home, was first baking for a week and a half, and then suddenly, when AL arrived, was drenched for a week and a half. It was fun though and I had never done a tour on a canal boat in Amsterdam before.

Back in Edinburgh, I made a start with editing the Postgrad Conference papers. This is a tedious job because... well, basically because Word is misbehaving. Also, the first-years’ inability to reference properly seems to be an epidemic that is spreading to postgrads. I guess they were never taught how to reference as first-years either.

I also spent time at the National Library again. Somewhere between two and two-and-a-half hours each day. It wasn’t as bad as previously; I guess that reading French is less offensive than reading German (from the time that Stalin was still a hero, so it’s German nonsense as well). I still need to spend lots more time at the NLS, because they have the books that Edinburgh University Library doesn’t have. Also I need about a truckload of Inter-Library Loan vouchers.

Now how did I end up reading stuff on historical demography?

In other news, my friends are slowly returning from various places which is a good cure against social isolation. I still haven’t managed to do any Fringe Festival thing, although I did go to the Book Festival and bought a book. If you take away the workshops which I have no intention of attending, and the meet-and-greets with authors who I don’t know and whose glory I am therefore not very likely to want to bask in*, the Book Festival is nothing more than a café and bookshop in a tent. That was slightly disappointing, although I don’t quite know how I would imagine a book festival other than that.

[* Now draw a Chomskyan tree for that! I wonder if it doesn’t violate a few constraints on pied piping...]

Freshers’ Week is coming scarily close, it’s only three weeks. I’m sure it’ll turn out fine in the end, but there are far too few ticks on the “Things to organize” sheet. It would also be very nice if we could find teachers for two of our classes, and venues for three of them. I have reasonable hope for the venues. Anyone feeling inclined to teach Beginners Country?

It is also amazing how quickly crap accumulates. It took half an hour to sort and put away all the bank statements, gas bills, book bills, New Scotland letters and other paperwork that had piled up on my desk. My folder with financial stuff is now officially full.

Tomorrow and Tuesday are American High School dems. They’re promising to be a hoot. Well, they’re usually okay and a better audience than the IALS ones, we don’t get haggis [that is a Bad Thing] but also we don’t get Mozambiquan dancing, Japanese singing or the so-manieth cross-dressing IALS staff contribution [that is a Very Good Thing]. It does involve silly monkey suits though, and I’m too polite to abuse the fact that BW really needs me to get rid of that uncomfortable pseudo-traditional garment.

Think that’s all for now.

Historical pedantry

I have a bone to pick with Dr. Jorge Cham. In a recent Piled Higher and Deeper comic [link], the character Prof. Smith is described as “recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Prize of the Federal Republic of the Netherlands”, among other things. This is total and utter nonsense. Of course I understand that the Ph.D. comic is a work of fiction, but it does at least suggest a real-life and contemporary setting – witness references to Stanford University and current events in the real world.

So just to educate the general populace that will not read this anyway...

Alexander von Humboldt (* Berlin 1769 – † Berlin 1859) was an explorer from [drum roll] Berlin, which was in Prussia. In other words, in Germany. In other words, not in the Netherlands. He did probably set foot on Dutch soil at some point during his travels, but the main foci of his work were Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Latin America. He did not write anything major about the Netherlands which makes a Dutch prize being named after him extremely unlikely in the first place.

More ridiculously... the Federal Republic of the Netherlands? My passport clearly says “Kingdom of the Netherlands” in twelve languages. Not Republic. Not Federal. We were a republic once, or rather, twice, in our history. From 1581 to 1795 we were the Republic of the (Seven) United Netherlands/Provinces, and then from 1795 to 1806 we were the Batavian Republic. (Those were the days.) Sure enough the United Provinces (not the Batavian Republic) were a federal republic but we were never called such.

Alexander von Humboldt’s first publication dates from 1790, so five years before the Netherlands ceased to be a federal republic. His major claim to fame, however, the five-year expotition to Latin America (1799 to 1804) came when the Netherlands were no longer federal and well on their way to becoming a Kingdom with a rabbit king.

In conclusion, a badly-named Alexander von Humboldt Prize of the Federal Republic of the Netherlands is not entirely beyond the realms of possibility, but the probability of a certain comic strip (anti-)hero graduating is doubtlessly infinitely greater.

Rant over.

(Only one more month before I can tell first-years that Wikipedia is evil!)

Pyramid tea bags

What they want you to think:

Pyramid tea bags are specifically designed by top-of-the-bill tea bag designers to improve hot water circulation through the tea bag, in order to perfect the brewing process as the tea leaves come into contact with the water. The design was inspired by the age-old knowledge that pyramids are a magical source of health, good luck and other invariably Good Things.

What really happened:
— Hey boss? There’s been a slight hitch in the tea bag sealing machine and they’re now asymetrically sealed.
— What? You [expletive deleted]!
— Yeah, sorry boss. But look, if you fiddle with it it kind of looks like a pyramid.
— “It kind of looks like a pyramid.” Now what good is that going to do?
— I s’pose not... But wait... What if we claim it was all on purpose? With the right ad campaign we can put 50 tea bags in a box instead of 80 and put 20% on the price as well. It’s a winner boss, we can’t lose I tell you!
— Yeah I guess those Britons are stupid enough to fall for it. Let’s give it a go.

Letter from the AHRC

I got a letter from the AHRC. I have funding for the remaining two years of the Ph.D.! That means (a) financially, that I don’t have to get so much money from my parents and (b) psychologically, the knowledge that other people have faith in me! Yay!

In the unimitable words of LG: *BoInG!*